Riders of the Steppes Read online

  Truly, a fine gift. And Sayanski asked not a kopeck in return. The people of Rusk stared mightily when Ayub appeared among them with the sword slung from his girdle, but the Cossack was pleased.

  "Eh—eh! This sword will match the magic of the Tatar who is chasing around among the stars. Gregory, my lad, when he comes down we'll soon finish him off!"

  I thought perhaps on Christmas eve when the spirits, as everyone knows, are up and about, Ayub's enemy might ride down into Rusk in flames. God willed otherwise, as I shall relate.

  The man who came to Rusk several days before Christmas was not the Tatar, but a splendid nobleman, Varslan. A sledge drew up at the smithy one day when Ima had just brought our noon bite, and Ayub was in his hut sleeping on his stove.

  A runner of the sledge was broken and Varslan ordered my uncle to mend it. He was a tall man, wrapped up in a sable coat that came to the tops of his polished boots. A heyduke waited on him—a fine officer's servant in a red kaftan.

  "Is this the sloboda of Rusk, fellow?" The gentleman asked of my uncle. "Then direct me to the estate of the landowner, and be quick about it!"

  When Old Goloto had pointed out the roof of the manor house near the edge of the wood, the nobleman swore that he'd be roasted in a brazen ox if he would lie here in such a sheep's trough a night after the sledge was mended. He tapped his snuff box and flicked the lace at his throat, scowling until his glance fell on Ima, who had drawn herself off into a corner, instead of hanging around as usual. Then the boyar saluted her politely and asked her name. When he would have taken her hand she slipped away.

  "Go to the manor house," he ordered his heyduke, "and inform the worthy Sayanski that the Cornet Varslan, his cousin, is arrived. I will follow at once."

  After he had given some more directions about the sledge, he looked around for Ima, but she had vanished. He took out his painted snuff box again, and walked off. His long saber, hung upon a low baldric, slapping against his boots—a tall man, quick moving, a fine weapon at his side.

  So the officer, Sayanski's cousin, came to Rusk.

  And that very evening he visited the tavern of the landowner, although Sayanski had not been there for a month. They sat down at the table next to Ayub and Blind Foma, where I was—for already the excitement of the coming festival was upon us children, and I wanted to see all that was going on.

  We all bowed when the two nobles came in, but Sayanski took no notice of us, as he was whispering to his cousin. The Cornet ordered wine and cursed the innkeeper because it was not better. He sat back on his stool as if it had been a lord's chair, and drank half a bottle, pulling at his mustache in silence the while, his sable coat thrown back, showing the lace and fine blue cloth of his uniform. No one presumed to speak aloud, except Ayub, who was trying to persuade Foma to play a piece.

  So it happened that everyone was sitting looking at them, and Sayan-ski was fingering his neckcloth restlessly, when the officer leaned back too far and lost his balance. He fell against Ayub, and got to his feet without assistance.

  "A pox on you, for a clumsy lout! Can't you keep from bumping into a man like me!" The gray eyes of the Cornet were cold.

  "Health to you, Excellency. Indeed I didn't move from my seat," answered Ayub, without growing angry.

  We all thought that the officer was provoked at his own clumsiness and wanted to make out that Ayub had jostled him.

  "I say that you did! A fine ataman, by all the saints, to sit guzzling in a village!"

  Not until then had we known that Ayub was captain of a kuren of Cossacks. Perhaps the Cornet Varslan had noticed some mark of his rank, or had heard of him. I do not know. Anyway, the officer was working himself into a magnificent rage.

  Ayub merely chuckled and looked around as if it were a good joke.

  "Mother of God!" cried Varslan. "Do you laugh at me?"

  "Why should I? When a fellow has a bottle of wine inside his skin like you, he feels like joking sure enough."

  "Ah, you call me fellow—you, a lick-spittle ruffian!"

  Varslan laid his hand on the hilt of his saber and aimed a kick at the stool on which Ayub sat. The big Cossack, however, rose to his feet so quickly that the stool spun away from under him. As he moved his fingers touched the handguard of the weapon Sayanski had given him, and he shook his head from side to side like a bear confronted by one of the wolfhounds.

  We all sat very quiet, and the landowner went over to a corner of the narrow room as if his boots would make too much noise. I was wondering if the Cossack would cut Varslan in two pieces with his magic sword, but Ayub drank the rest of the mead that was in his tankard and wiped his mustache lazily.

  "Eh, Cornet," he muttered, "this tavern is very small. Still it is much better than a box of a room six feet by two by three—the kind a fellow lives in after he is dead."

  Varslan frowned, as if puzzled by this, and Ayub took Foma by the arm and moved to the door, stopping to pay his score and bid us good night. It seemed to me that the officer was more angry than before, for some reason or other. Before long he went out, leaving the reckoning to Sayanski, who tramped along at his heels. I waited a moment and followed, pulling up my coat, for the night was bitter without.

  The two men from the manor house were standing in the highway, talking, and, after pretending to walk around the tavern, I tiptoed up to the hedge, glad that the moon was behind clouds just then.

  Varslan was saying that the Cossack was a coward, and he could not make him stand his ground—whatever he meant by that. Then Sayanski pulled at his sleeve and said—

  "Hush!"

  But as they moved off I heard Varslan answer.

  "It will be simpler, you confounded dog, to take the horse another way. You will gain nothing from the sword, after all. Without doubt my dear cousin—I'll find amusement enough to pass the time."

  Then they released their horses and rode away. I wasted no time in circling the village in running to my uncle's cottage, because it looked as if the two gentlemen had meant to quarrel with Ayub, so that Sayanski could get his hand on the black stallion, in some way or other. The thought troubled me, the more so that I found my uncle and Ayub together in the smithy, although it was then late at night.

  Old Goloto would listen to no words from me, but thrust me out of the door, shutting it tight and barring it from within. I lingered outside, shivering, because Ayub ought to know what I had heard.

  The two talked within a long time, and when the bellows began to hiss and my uncle's hammer to strike on the anvil, I knew that they would not come out for a long time. Enough of their speech had reached me to show that Ayub had come to my uncle to have an edge put on his sword—the bewitched weapon that Sayanski had given him.

  So I crossed over to our cottage and warmed myself by the stove where Ima was busy sewing the last silver threads on a kind of tinsel cap. She put it on and looked at me saucily, saying that she would get more cakes and pennies thrown to her tomorrow night—Christmas eve—than I would, when we went to the manor house to sing carols.

  "I am too old to go around with the children," I answered proudly. "Ayub says that soon I will have a horse and ride off to the wars."

  "Pah! Ayub is too lazy to move off his stove."

  Still, she kissed me good night without pinching me, and I heard her singing by the stove.

  Christmas eve was cold. Ice had formed along the banks of Father Dnieper— solid, snow-coated ice at the shore, thin, gray ice farther out. Only in midriver did the black current run past us without a coating.

  When the full moon came up over the bare branches of the Witches' Wood, by the river bank, we children gathered together and went from cottage to cottage, singing carols and scrambling for the tidbits thrown to us by the good people.

  The Witches' Wood we shunned, perhaps because the chill breath of the river was to be felt under the skeletons of trees, perhaps because it was the night that the river spirits were apt to climb ashore and snatch away goats or babies. Especially the
folk of Rusk maintained that a data-baba, a woman hob-gob, lived in the wood. Many people had seen the hob-gob o' nights, so she was surely there.

  You may be sure we skirted the trees when we went to sing at Ayub's hut. The Cossack chuckled at us and gave us a fine mess of warm sausages that we ate as we tramped away toward the manor house, on the other side of the wood. I could see Ayub looking after us, his eyes following Ima like a dog's. It struck me then what a pretty thing she was, in her silver cap, like a fine princess. Perhaps because she had not teased me the night before—

  At the manor house, which was splendidly lighted with real candles, we sang "Come, Holy Spirit," and Varslan came to one of the doors and joined in with a strong, mellow voice. Then he scattered kopecks with both hands, as if he had been drinking, and we were soon shouting, over having money—actual money—in our fists. Going back to the village, someone dared us to go around by the river, through the Witches' Wood.

  We began by taking hands and running as hard as we could, skipping and shouting. But before long the uneven ground and the thickets separated us, and I heard some of the girls crying. I shivered—it was so quiet under the tall trees where little clods of snow and bits of ice fall down on the snow crust with a strange rattling, and the shadows of the thickets all looked like old women waiting to jump out on us. A girl screamed aloud behind me and I started to go back out of the wood.

  It was a frightful, whimpering cry, as if one of the children had seen the evil hob-gob.

  I heard it again, nearer as I went through the last fringe of bushes and saw the river in front of me. Then I stopped, surprised.

  None of the other children were around, except Ima—I knew her silver cap in the bright moonlight, and her flying black hair. She was running away from two men, and they were the Cornet Varslan, and his heyduke. And she was passing out from the bank to the snow-coated ice.

  It was a strange, new game, I thought, as I watched them. The men overtook Ima, who struggled in their hands like a wild pony of the steppe caught for the first time. It was when she cried out again that I understood she was afraid.

  For she broke away from them and ran, as if the Evil One were after her, her shining black boots flying over the thin, gray ice out from shore. I heard Varslan laugh as he tried to catch her; then he stopped and called out angrily. She looked over her shoulder, just as the ice at the current's edge gave way and she dropped into the black water.

  Ah, that is a thing my mind's eye can see even now—the rush of the dark water, Ima's glittering cap floating downstream, and the two men standing looking out from where the ice was still safe. I must have been running then, toward them, for presently I was shouting at Varslan and weeping at the same time.

  "Go, and bring her back, Excellency. See, there she is! Hurry, hurry and swim after her."

  I was tugging at his sleeve the while, but the two stared out at the current and looked at each other. The heyduke shrugged his broad shoulders and shook his head. Varslan was repeating under his breath:

  "Mother of God—how cold it must be! What a fool—what a fool!"

  Then he noticed me and drew his arm away with a frown.

  "Excellency," said the heyduke, "it's that brat of the smith's."

  "Gregory," Varslan spoke evenly now as if nothing had happened at all. "Your sister, or cousin, or whatever she was, slipped on the ice, and it broke under her. Hm, yes. We were playing a game, d'ye understand?"

  But I could not take my eyes from the black water, where Ima's cap was no longer to be seen.

  "D'ye understand? We could not aid her—it was not safe."

  My knees were trembling and my throat seemed to be stuffed with something. By the time I reached the men Ima was beyond any help of mine. They spoke together in a low tone and moved off toward the manor house. By and by I felt that my hands were numb and the tears frozen on my checks. I hated Varslan, yet could not understand why.

  Reaching the shore I looked back, just on the point of calling to Ima to come after me. Then for the first time I realized that she was dead and began to run through the wood.

  In front of me a dark figure stepped from a shadow, but I was not frightened. It was Blind Foma, the moonlight gleaming on the scar on his cheek. He said he had heard Ima scream.

  When I told him what had happened at the river his lips drew back from his teeth on the side of his face away from the scar, and he started to feel his way through the trees toward Ayub's hut. I ran on, thinking of nothing but of finding Old Goloto.

  My uncle never moved hand or eye while he listened to my tale. Then I heard him muttering and saw that both his hands were gripped in his beard. He did not take his hands away nor did his lips stop moving. Once he looked up and asked if Blind Foma had surely said that it was Ima's voice. Then his brown face grew pale and he reached up one hand toward the sword he kept over the mantle.

  "Will you go to the manor house and punish Varslan?" I cried. "I hate him! It was an evil game that he played, and Ima was frightened."

  Old Goloto looked at his hand, in the firelight, and commenced shaking his head from side to side.

  "Ai—a! They are the boyars—gentlefolk. Nay, nay, Gregory—"

  Never before or since have I heard my uncle curse a man. His eyes were set and his hands shook. Then he stumbled out of the cottage, without cap or coat; yet he did not take his sword and he went toward the river.

  I could not abide in the cottage, nor would my thoughts turn from Varslan and his heyduke. I walked over the snow, following the beaten paths until I came to the manor house, which was still glowing with candles. Below the house the chimes in the church were sounding the midnight carol. The door stood open, and I entered the long hall, going into the dining chamber.

  Here a fine fire was crackling away on the hearth, and Varslan and Sayanski were sitting near it with steaming glasses of varenukha. The officer heard my step, but, seeing that I was alone sat back in his chair, holding the long saber over his knees.

  "Give him some money," said Sayanski after a while.

  Now I remembered that, all the time, I had held some of Varslan's kopecks clutched in my fist. I threw them down at his feet, and he looked at me curiously.

  "The--!" said Sayanski. "We can't have any doings like that. Come,

  imp, haven't you told your uncle that Ima was drowned—" he coughed— "an accident, mind you? Well, it's high time you were about it—"

  He stopped and both of the men rose. A board creaked behind me, and I saw that Ayub stood in the door of the dining room. Just then the heyduke entered with a tray and a pitcher of the smoking brandy, and he set the things down with a clatter when he saw the Cossack smiling at him.

  Ayub did not seem to be restless or moody this night. He took off his high, sheepskin hat and bowed, his scalp lock wiggling on his shaven head.

  "Health to you, good sirs," he said in his slow voice. "I am the ataman Ayub of the Ural encampment, whom you called hard names at the tavern a while ago. I hope, by the saints, you haven't forgotten! Nay, finish your glass, Cornet Varslan."

  He strode toward the table, the loose boards squeaking under his weight, and clanked his new sword, scabbard and all, down beside the tray so that the pitcher and the heyduke, too, jumped.

  "Dog," he growled at the attendant, "don't you know when a Cossack is thirsty?"

  The heyduke grinned under his mustache and backed away, looking at his master, so Ayub filled himself a glass and emptied it down his throat, and then told me to run along to my uncle. But I did not go further than the door, because Varslan spoke up, staring the while at Ayub as if he were a stranger.

  "-ed if I wasn't drunk at the inn. You spoke of it yourself, ataman,

  at the time, I think. Will you take another glass with me?"

  For some reason the officer had changed. He did not seem to want to quarrel with Ayub now.

  The Cossack shook his head. "Nay, Cornet Varslan, you will not drink another mug of this brandy."

  The officer frown
ed, pulling at his mustache as he watched Ayub. I saw that Sayanski was rubbing his hands together, looking from one to the other as if well satisfied.

  "You were pleased to try to kill me, Cornet," smiled Ayub, "to have the black stallion for your cousin. That is a small matter. But now, by the Cross, you have the blood of a young girl on your hands. So if you don't take up your saber I'll have to clip your mustachios and mark you for a murderer—"

  In a trice the Cossack's brows drew down and his teeth gleamed. Varslan had whipped out his sword and stepped toward him. Ayub had his weapon clear of the scabbard Sayanski had given him, and parried as the officer slashed wide. The two blades struck fire with a great clash. Ayub warded the saber by simply stiffening his massive right arm, although Varslan had put all his height and weight into the blow.

  Then Varslan stepped back, biting his lip. And Sayanski's eyes seemed to pop out of his head of a sudden, and he swore as if greatly puzzled by what had happened. But the Cossack advanced eagerly, cutting and thrusting, crying—

  "To one of us life: to the other death!"

  I wondered why, if Ayub's sword was bewitched, he had not slashed the saber in two, and ended Varslan right there.

  But the air was humming with the vibrating steel and the two fighters were ringed in flashes of light, where the candle glow caught the steel of the blades.

  Clash-cling: clang-clang! It was a brave sight!

  Ayub stepped aside suddenly and cut down, but not at his foe. The hey-duke had been stealing toward him, thrusting a chair at his legs. A drawn saber was in the man's hand, yet it did not serve in the least to check the Cossack's stroke that shore through coat and flesh severing the heyduke's body in two—save for the spine.

  Groaning, the man fell on his knees, clutching at his entrails that were slipping out of the great gash. Then the two swordsmen were at it again, cli ng— clang— cling!